A Guide to Creating Your 2019 Content Marketing Plan

Content Marketing

How to create consistent, clear content to achieve your business and marketing objectives

If
you want to get serious about marketing your business, it’s time to turn to
your content marketing plan for 2019. Reading that sentence might set alarm
bells off, ‘where will I find the time for that?’ ‘what even is content
marketing?’ ‘does my business really need it?’. But it’s okay, we’re here to
help. Content marketing is vital in promoting your business. Content can be
anything from a blog post, a Facebook status or Instagram post, email
newsletter, brochure, purchase confirmation email, your website content, and
much more. What messages is your business sending out into the world? Are they
consistent? Do they really represent your brand, values, goals? We’re here to
dig deeper and allow you to develop a clear-cut view, ready to create your 2019
content marketing plan.

Content
marketing is the connection between your product or service, and the rest of
the world. How you are communicating your brand to audiences. If you want a
clear, consistent message, it seems obvious that you need a well thought out
plan when it comes to content. Rather than sporadic social media posts and the
once a year email newsletter, it’s time to put more thought into content:
planning, creating, and promoting.

Planning Your Content

So,
where do you find this content?

Before
you begin planning your 2019 content marketing plan, you should complete an audit of your existing content. This may be
your website content, social media posts, email newsletters, physical marketing
material, any way you communicate the message of your brand to the world. By
analysing your existing content, you’ll be able to see which content has worked
better for your audience, did you receive a better response from a photo of
your team with a short, fun, caption, or a long-form educational blog post that
you shared? Determine which type of media performed best: text, images, video,
gifs, stories or posts. Doing this will help you understand your existing
audience, what they respond positively to, and gives an indication of what you
should focus on for 2019.

A
content audit allows you to see where there’s room for improvement or content
gaps that need filling. Perhaps there are forms of content that you’re yet to
consider.

Look
at your competitors and see the content they’re promoting and how often they’re
sharing it.

Do some keyword research

You
can check Google
Analytics to discover which keywords are bringing people to your
website.

While
it’s more complex than simply using keywords, one of the many elements
influencing your ranking in Google is whether you’re using the right keywords.
Create a list of suitable topics related to your business, then turn this into
a list of 10-20 keywords around which to focus your content.

Know Your Purpose

Your
content marketing plan is the connection between your business objectives and
marketing strategy. The content you produce and promote should align with your
long-term marketing and business goals.

If
you don’t set aside time to create a content marketing plan, you run the risk
of producing random content with no clear intention. It doesn’t benefit you or
your business as it doesn’t really move any closer to achieving business or
marketing goals. The content you create should all have a purpose and that
purpose needs to align with your business objectives. If you create a content
marketing plan, you can understand how much easier it is for consistency.

Once
you’ve identified your purpose, you can set
clear goals.

Setting
goals can launch your strategy into action. Whichever goals you set, ensure
they’re as specific as possible, this allows the goals to be measurable,
tracking your progress.

Relevant — a relevant goal is aligned closely to your business
objectives.

Time Specific — give your goal a deadline. Providing time deadlines
creates a sense of urgency.

Once
your goals are set, you should revisit them frequently to determine whether
you’re on track or if something needs adjusting.

Create Content with Your
Target Audience in Mind

Who
is going to consume the content you create?

Don’t
try to reach everyone. When creating content, you should have your target
audience in mind. Each piece of content created should be for an intended
audience- it won’t work unless it is targeted.

When
creating content, your aim is to add value to the audience. What can you offer
them in turn for their time? Why should they choose to consume your content
over the endless amount of other content out there? What are you doing to solve
their problems?

All
successful businesses are based on their ability to meet the needs of their
audience and content marketing is no exception.

Break
down your audience by creating marketing
personas. By doing this, you can create content that is most
relevant and useful to your audience.

Creating
marketing personas using this template will allow you to better understand your
audience and therefore, create purposeful content, based on your content
marketing plan, that can propel your business objectives.

You
can fill out the marketing persona template using information from Google
Analytics, talking to your team, looking at social media research, and by
asking your audience questions.

Determine Your Formats

Now that you have a clearer understanding of your audience, you can look at where they go to consume content and direct your energy towards those platforms.

You
also need to evaluate the internal and external resources needed to implement
your content marketing plan. Is there someone that can regularly write blog posts?
Create videos or podcasts? Schedule and post on social media? Do you need to
outsource this?

You
may already have high-performing content that can be repurposed, say a
high-performing blog post on a particular topic that you can repurpose into a
video for social media.

Always Gather Ideas

Whether
you note them on a notepad, in Google Docs, a spreadsheet, or in your phone
notes, create a place for the ideas you gather. Here you can add links to
interesting articles, videos, studies, ideas or content to share. You can
revisit this for inspiration or as a resource.

Create a Content Calendar

A content calendar allows you to keep track of your content. You can add important holidays relevant to your business and plan seasonal content and annual campaigns.

A
content calendar also allows you to create a mix of content types, including
blog posts, videos, and social media posts.

There
are many different content calendar templates available that you can use, or
you can create your own. One we find simple to use is the Hootsuite
editorial calendar spreadsheet. It’s a basic editorial calendar
template, which you can add to as needed. There are plenty of other social
media templates available.

Jezweb Can Create Your 2019 Content Marketing Plan for You

If this is overwhelming, and you’d
rather focus on your actual business rather than the promotion of it, we’re
here to help. We offer content writing and marketing services, taking care of
your content marketing plan for you so that you have more time to focus on your
business. From email newsletters and website copy to social media posts, we can
create words and imagery that align with your business objectives and engage
your audience.

If you’d like to boost your 2019
content marketing strategy, give us a call on (02) 4951 5267.

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